Don't Try to Believe It!

Transcript S2E8

 Don’t Try to Believe It!

[00:00]

Hello, I'm Tony Kostas, and welcome to Led Into Love.

There's a big difference between trying to believe something and knowing it. And I want to really focus on that now, because there are so many Christians who say they believe things … and I know they're sincere.

From the time that I first came to know Jesus and I knew that I was changed on the inside, it did open up a whole new world to me. I would hear things preached, or I'd read things in the Bible, and I knew in my heart that they were true. I'd meet other Christians, and we'd talk about God and our experience of God, and we knew that what we were sharing something that was real.

[00:45] 

But what I'm really talking about here is not, “Do you believe this, or that, or the other?” Because you can get together … a bunch of Christians can get together … and you can talk about … say, “Here's this Bible verse. Do you believe that?” And other things that we hold true: “Do you believe that?” And something Jesus said … “Do you believe that?” And so on. And so many things that we say: “Yeah, I believe that … I believe that … I believe that.”

But real belief – the belief that I'm talking about, the belief that God looks for … You know, there was a time when Jesus said of Himself, “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Now what was He talking about? He wasn't talking about – like, He comes back and he gets a bunch of people together and says, “Okay guys. Do you believe that?” And they say, “Yep”. “Do you believe that?” “Yep.” “Yep.” “Yep.” And He certainly wasn't talking about will He find religion on the earth – even though the word ‘faith’ has become sort of synonymous for ‘religion’. So, they say something is ‘multi-faith’, or this person is ‘a man of faith’, or they talk about a ‘religious faith’.

[01:52] 

Faith is believing God! I've talked more than once in these podcasts about Abraham who believed God, and that was counted to him as righteousness. But belief – true belief –has to come from what you absolutely, unequivocally know!

And … I was going to say ‘believe me,’ … and I will say it! Believe me. Believe me. That is impossible, unless you are living in a relationship with God where you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that something is true.

I know what it's like to be a Christian – someone who is ‘born-again,’ – and you know that you know Jesus. And you know that your life has changed. And you know that certain things are true – not because someone's convinced you about them, but your heart resonates to those things. You read something in the Bible, or you hear someone preaching, or you share with other Christians … and you know things are true.

That's fine. That's … that's like being sure of a … of a truth. But knowing it's … it's the truth is not the same as believing it as God talks about faith, and as Jesus talked about faith. Because saying something is true, simply says that it is inherently true. 

You know, these days, where many people prefer to believe science than even believe that there is a God … People say, “I believe the science.” You know, “This thing … I'm satisfied that this thing has been proven to be true and I believe it!” And they will take a stand on it, and they'll even stake their lives on it. And that's fine. But that's not the same thing that God looks for, and it's not the same thing … about the same thing … as believing God.

 [03:57] 

Believing God means that you know Him, and something is taking place between you and Him constantly, that is feeding your heart. So that you're not even just believing that something is inherently true – but you know that it's so, in such a way that you will live exactly as that truth says.

What that truth talks about is the way you live your life. Not because, “I'm a Christian now, and this is what Christians do, and this is what Christians believe, and this is how we do things.” But because you have totally given yourself to God.

Even when I say something like ‘totally giving yourself to God’ … I mean … I know, because this sort of terminology comes to us all so easily. But really, is there any other way to give yourself to God? Is there any other way to have a relationship with God? God – the God of the whole universe – the God who gave His son Jesus to die for you. But in totality!

It's … it's like … like in a marriage. We know that … forget the different versions of marriage and man's versions of marriage … we know that marriage came from God. Marriage was God's idea in the first place. And in marriage, two people give themselves to one another. And the only way that you can really have a marriage is … and that is in totality. And it's not like a 50-50 thing. Each person gives themselves to the other a hundred percent, and one partner can't say to the other, “Well … well, you know, I will give myself a hundred percent if you do.” Because it's not contingent on what the other person does. It's that you've decided this is the person for you. And what you do, you do because it's your heart's desire. The only way you can have the relationship with that person that your heart yearns to have, is to give yourself like that.

[06:03]

How much more is that true of us and God when it's true of us and God like that? We don't try to believe things.

One of the hardest things – And I, you know, I went to Bible College. Because of … because of getting … coming … to know Jesus when I was 17, I went into my adult life discovering what it was that had happened to me that night when I first met Jesus. And along the way … especially when I went to Bible College – which was a missionary-oriented Bible college and … and the whole idea of that was you … you … we'd go there. We would live in. We would have lectures on different aspects of the Bible, or different aspects of Christianity, and theology. So that we were prepared, that at the end of our course – because it was a missionary … missionary-oriented, college – that we would, at the end of our course, all – in one way or another – feel called to some missionary work.

So the whole idea was: spend a couple of years in a training situation like that and come out having learned so much, and being so equipped, that you can actually be someone who is carrying out what Jesus said to His disciples – when He said, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

[07:32]

I have to tell you, that is not God's way. It's man's way!

Which brings me back to what trying to believe something is – as against knowing that truth in a way that transforms you, so that you, in turn, are effective in transforming other people's lives. Jesus said that the person who believes in Him – believes in Him! – out of that person's innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. And He said that those rivers would be from the spirit of God, that God would give to that person.

Now none of those things that I've just said, have anything to do with how much you learn, how much you can quote, how much you believe to be true. And it has everything to do with the fact that you live in a belief relationship with Jesus – which means: That He is everything that He says he is. That He is everything that Christians say they believe He is. That He gave His Spirit to be poured into, and to flow out of, those who would believe in Him.

And this has nothing to do with anything that men can contrive, and has everything to do with what God can do with ordinary human beings like you and like me.

[09:18] 

That's the wonder of being someone living in this world, in these human bodies, with all the apparent limitations, and the things that make us individual human beings … and yet be the sons of God.

Now the sons of God, according to the Bible, are those who are led by God's Spirit. And when we talk about sons, I hope you realize – I certainly hope you realize – we are talking about sons and daughters …in a sense. 

But I also want to emphasize this. The reason why it talks about sons of God … “As many as are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God”… We're not talking about sonship in a gender sense. We're talking about sonship in the privileged sense of who you are to God.

Jesus was the Son of God, but He came to bring many sons to glory. He came to be “the firstborn of a whole new creation”. He came to be the expression of God in this world. Not only of Himself, but now through you and through me. If we say, “That is the person that God has called me to be also,” … not an imitation of Jesus, not an emulation of Jesus … but as true an expression of God as Jesus was. Because He came as a man so that, as a man, He could express God, so that He could be expressed through them.

[10:55] 

And if you say, “Well, but that was just for once – like on the day of Pentecost … I was just reading in the Acts of the Apostles the other night, how this Roman centurion, who believed in God … who even the Christians, let alone the Jews, wouldn't have even thought twice about, as someone that God could be interested in … this man who was so faithful to God, that an angel appeared to him and got him to send some people a couple of days journey to another … another town, Joppa. To find Peter … the apostle Peter.

In the meantime, God had to give Peter a vision (you can read about it in the Acts of the Apostles) … had to give Peter a vision to show him that it was okay to go and speak to someone he wouldn't have thought God would be interested in.

But the thrilling thing is, that when Peter started … went to this guy's house and the man had gathered his family and other friends around, to hear what this Peter had to say … And as Peter was speaking to them the Holy Spirit just came upon them, and they began to speak in tongues like happened on the day of Pentecost.

And when Peter then … subsequent to all this … when he had some strong questioning from some of the other believers who heard about this, that … “Hey, you went to a guy, a Roman – the guy’s a Gentile, and you preached to him!” And Peter told him the whole story. And I love the fact that he said, “You know, as I was speaking to them, what amazed me was that the Holy Spirit came on them as he did on us at the beginning!”

He was talking about the Day of Pentecost. He was saying, like, “Hey, the same thing that happened to us back there, happened to them!”

[12:39] 

Now, unless you are so given over to God … now, even when I say that, you know, I don't like that – even as I hear myself say it. And I'll tell you why. Because there can be a sense of intensity and, like ‘something I've got to do’.

So let me rephrase it and say: unless you are so open and surrender yourself to God …make Him your whole desire … how can you expect to know Him for who He really is? Coming to know Him, in the sense of being born again, is a beautiful thing. But it will never be enough. It'll be at the beginning. 

To me, it's very much like … like the sort of very unpleasant thought of a baby being born and somehow, you know, it doesn't grow. It doesn't develop. But it's just a cute little baby for the rest of its life.

[13:40]

It's very sad, but unfortunately, still today – and certainly it's been so all the years that I've been a Christian – it's like just running a maternity ward, and bringing people into God's kingdom as newborns. And then basically fitting them into a system … getting them to have a part in that system, that does not draw the people up into being the sons and daughters of God – those who are the expression of God in this world. But, rather, that they are going along, day after day, mouthing certain things – fitting in with what they've been told is what being a Christian is …trying to believe things.

Not because their heart knows the truth of it so much that they can't help but live it, but trying to believe it and trying to fit into something – because, essentially, what's in their heart is from God.

[14:44]

There is only one way to be the kind of Christian that you read about in the Bible – particularly in the Acts of the Apostles. You read about the early Church, and you read about the people from all around the Roman Empire whose lives were transformed. And those people … it wasn't just the apostles … wasn't just those first Christians at the very beginning. Those people knew the truths of God because they knew the God of those truths! They knew God. They knew Him, and they believed Him.

That is the only Christianity that is true Christianity! Why is it called Christianity? Because it is supposed to be what Jesus Christ … the Son of God … the Christ … the Messiah … who He was. It is not belief about Him. It is the expression of Him, through a Living Body of human beings like you and like me. On the face of it, very ordinary people. In reality, the living expression of God in this world. That's what the early church was.

It's a very simple thing to live for God, but it's a very total thing to know beyond any doubt that every word that God speaks to your heart – and I want to emphasize that not because you read it in the Bible, not because someone tells you it's true, not because it registers to you that that is a truth.

Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” That means, not proceeded – that is, not past tense – proceeds out of the mouth of God. That is in the present continuous tense.

[16:47] 

You are living your life moment by moment, day by day. Each one of us is … if you are walking with God and your life is yielded to Him, then He is speaking to you. He is making things real to you. You know them to be true, and if your heart is constantly open to God and responsive to him, you find that – whether you're praying, or going somewhere, or doing something – you have that sense that you really are authentically living out what is real to you.

Now, that's not trying to believe something. That is knowing it. And when you know it, not only are you transformed, but the truth of who God is, is seen and experienced by other people. 

Not because you're even trying to convert them. Not because you're trying to convince them. But if they have eyes to see and ears to hear … not by your efforts, but by your being – by you being salt and by you being light – then that is how God and Jesus are seen and known and heard in this world.

[18:06] 

So, from my heart, I say to you: Don't try to believe it. Know it!